Paul Moorcraft - The Anchoress of Shere

The professor carefully locked the door to the room and went downstairs. He ordered the refreshments, and spoke to the very attentive landlady: “May I borrow some women’s clothes for Miss Stewart, and may I use your phone to make a quick call?”

“Anything you like, Professor, this is the busiest we’ve been in months. Like Piccadilly Circus.” And then in a soft voice: “How is she?”

“As fine as can be expected. She’s had a very rough ride.”

The landlady led him to the phone in the room behind the bar, and promised to deliver the clothes within minutes. Gould then dutifully rang Shere police station to inform them where Marda was.

Politely refusing the numerous offers of congratulatory drinks from the over-curious crowd at the bar, he trotted up the stairs and unlocked his room. The bathroom door was half-open and the air was hot and steamy.

“Are you OK, Marda?”

There was no response.

He shouted this time, nearer the door: “Is everything OK?”

He heard the lavatory flush.

“Yes, I’m cleaner, but still starving and parched.”

“Oh, good. I’ve scrounged some clothes for you. Much more your size. They’re on their way. I’ve rung the police and told them where we are. I don’t want them to think you’ve disappeared again. A respectable professor taking a beautiful young lady and a dog to his room is not something I could hide for long-if I read you English correctly… Especially when I asked the landlady for some women’s clothes.” He hoped a little levity would help the girl.

The professor knew that Marda should be in hospital, where she would have received expert attention, yet he also admired her pluck. He was trying to jolly the girl along, hoping he might help to stop her collapsing. He knew that such anguish could not be suppressed for long, especially at the moment of safety, when the body, so long enduring, often gives up in abject surrender. One remedy was to keep talking, because it helped to let it all out, bit by bit. His job was to calm her down until she could receive proper medical help.

She came out, wearing a towel wrapped turban-style around her head and another large one around her body.

“ Two big towels; you are spoiled, professor. Mostly they have a single little one in English hotels.”

She retreated into a small armchair. She had been obsessed by her starved frame when she was in her cell, but now the elation of freedom helped her transcend such concerns.

“I look like Twiggy, don’t I? I’ll have to eat six meals a day for a month,” she said, a little self-consciously, and with a slight tinge of suppressed hysteria in her voice.

She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Marda jumped slightly.

“Don’t worry. You’re safe now,” Gould said reassuringly. “Come in.”

The landlady came in with the clothes that Gould had requested, and a large tray of sandwiches, tea and orange juice, which the ex-captive fell upon.

The landlady said, “Hope everything will be all right now that you’re free. If there’s anything you want-make-up or anything of that sort, just ask me, love.” And, before leaving, she gave Marda a little hug. Marda wanted to say thank you but her mouth was too full of food, so she just nodded her appreciation.

After she had demolished five or six more sandwiches over the next twenty minutes, Marda began to ask a thousand questions. She begged for a cigarette, and Gould gave her one of his Marlboros. She was smoking, eating, drinking and talking in a frenzy.

“Take it easy, Marda, you’ll be sick,” Gould warned.

She tried on the borrowed clothes, gabbling all the time. “They fit reasonably well; they’ll do until I get to my flat; presumably my clothes will still be there, don’t you think, Professor? Might be a bit damp, though.” Her words were barely comprehensible through the thick ham sandwich wedged in her mouth.

“Marda, seeing as we’re sharing a bathroom, at least call me Irvine. My friends call me Irv.”

“OK, Irv .” She got up, and walked back into the bathroom to remove some food stuck in her teeth.

“Why did you call the police?” she asked distractedly through the open door.

“Well, for one thing, because the police need to know where you are right now, especially since Duval hasn’t been caught. I wanted to check that there is a policeman in your flat. And they mentioned again your not staying in hospital.”

“Professor, I couldn’t stand to be locked in any more, even in a hospital.”

She came out of the bathroom again and faced him squarely. “I will go to the hospital tomorrow, and every day, to see my brother. I’ll have a check-up, but I can’t be ordered to be in one place. I have to be physically free. Free. Free. At last.” She hiccupped as a result of her hasty eating, put her hand to her mouth, swallowed, and added very plaintively, “Don’t you understand?”

“Slow down, Marda. The police will have to ask you lots of questions.”

She lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and coughed. “I have a question for you, Professor, I mean Irvine. Irv . Mark mentioned that you knew Duval. What exactly is your connection with him?”

“My research on Christine, the Anchoress of Shere.”

It was the very last thing that she wanted to hear at that moment.

“You’re not another maniac who’s obsessed with locking people up, are you?” She said this without alarm in her voice, because her brother had spoken highly of the professor during their shouted exchanges in the cellar.

“No, no,” replied Gould. “I’ve been working on an article on her life in France, but you don’t want to hear any more about an obscure fourteenth-century religieuse , I’m sure. And, incidentally, I didn’t know Duval at all really. Just read a few of his articles and met him briefly.”

The slightly defensive tone in the professor’s voice prompted Marda to indulge in a small smile for the first time since her release: “Actually, I’m a world authority on the subject of Christine Carpenter,” she said. “That’s what the pile of papers there is about. It’s Duval’s book. The only copy, I think. The one he forced me to read again and again while he kept me in his awful prison.”

“To be honest, I can understand you returning for the dog, but going back into that prison just for a book…I don’t get it.”

Marda took another bite from a sandwich. “I can’t really explain, but somehow I wanted her-Christine-to be free of him as well. We both had to get out of his clutches. In some way I identified with her. Who knows? You can take it to read. But look after it.”

“I can see it’s precious to you. I will read it, and presumably so will the police.”

“No,” said Marda emphatically. “The police would take it and keep it as evidence. It’s private, and it’s mine. Some of the stuff he wrote was absolutely mad, but she is-was-separate from him. I’m sure she was a good person. I think I deserve to keep the book after all I’ve gone through.”

“All right, Marda, if it’s that important to you. Technically, you have stolen police evidence, but let’s not make a fuss about it now. I’ll put it in the hotel strong-box later, if you like. I think it will be safe on the coffee table for the moment…”

There was another knock on the door and the sound of heavy boots shuffling outside.

“Sergeant Terence Davidson, Surrey police, sir.”

Soon the room seemed to be full of doctors, uniformed policemen and plain-clothes detectives. Marda’s friend Jenny was allowed in for ten minutes, and they hugged and kissed and promised to do a hundred things together once the policemen and doctors had finished their business.